


three thousand, four hundred and thirty-three black (origami) (fire-breathing) swans

by fairytalefix



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Swan Believer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4928899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalefix/pseuds/fairytalefix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What the Dark Swan does in her spare time.  Swan Believer silliness with a dash of angst.  Oh, and Henry gets a new pet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three thousand, four hundred and thirty-three black (origami) (fire-breathing) swans

It wasn’t working. It was all his idea and it wasn’t working. She got the swan part down three-thousand, three hundred and sixty seven swans ago, but the eyes and pointed teeth (yes, pointed teeth) weren’t working. They went from sedate black paper swan to ridiculous caricature with two dots and two squiggles of her white marker. The swan pinched between her fingers was laughing at her, she could feel it.

She incinerated it. She briefly thought of blazing the lot of them with their crisp creases pressed in with a bone folder and their vacant, callow expressions. But no. Blazing the flock would burn down the house, and house hunting was dull and messy, what with home owners torn for milliseconds between fleeing their homes when ordered and foolishly staying to defend their property.

Like anyone could defend anything from her.

She was bored. And irritated. And just when she was thinking of hopping to realm #65034, the tropical one with the flame spitting beetles (she had a soft spot for incendiary devices, biological, mechanical, or magical), someone knocked on the door.

And then opened it. (The nerve.)

She sprang to her feet, all matter of curses and hexes and incantations swirling around her when she heard Henry call,

“Mom? You— _whoa_.”

Henry. Of course it was Henry. The idiot pirate was still off on his little side mission and Regina hadn’t spoken to her in days. No, wait. Hours. Time was tricky when you could see all of it. Her parents she had frightened away by threatening to curse Neal should they ever think of stepping foot onto her property.

She materialized in front of Henry, her smug smile shifting to a scowl when she saw his shock. “What is it?” Her voice was deeper now, more menacing. Like she had smoked two packs of cigarettes and stayed up too late with a bottle of bourbon. Maybe she should take up rock music.

“Did you make all of these?” He pointed at the black paper swans perched on her shelves, littering her floor, and heaped into piles. 

She sniffed. “I did.”

“I was just here,” he protested. “Three hours ago. That’s, like, two thousand swans.”

“Three thousand, four-hundred and thirty three,” she corrected, and her scowl deepened. “They’re all terrible.”

“What do you mean terrible?” he asked, plucking one off of the shelf and examining it. “You folded them really well.”

“They’re abominations. I should destroy them.”

“Okay,” Henry drew out. “That’s one option. One very valid option,” he was careful to emphasize. “But before these swans–”

“More like goblins shaped like geese.”

“These goblin geese go the way of your macramé–”

“Absurd.”

“–knitting–”

“Idiotic.”

“–ceramics–”

“Mud.” Her lip curled in a sneer. (Sneers were gloriously satisfying.)

“–and watercolors–”

She snarled. “Colored. Water.” (She adored snarling.)

“–maybe we can…talk about why you think they’re terrible. Maybe you don’t have to destroy–” 

She cut him off with another satisfying sneer. He bonked her on the nose with an origami swan and she leaped back, sputtering.

“Stop that,” he said. “I’m helping you.”

“I don’t need you’re help.”

“You do. You’re bored out of your mind and if we don’t find a way to keep you occupied, you’re gonna lose it.” He crossed his arms over his stomach, his determined and somewhat bemused expression not unlike his other mother’s. “So, tell me.” He twirled the swan in front of her. “What’s so bad about these guys? I think they’re kinda cute.”

She roared in disgust. The table rattled against the hardwood. The chandelier swung like a pendulum. The windows quivered. The goblin geese skittered from their piles and into tributaries along the floor.

“Feel better?” Henry asked when she was done.

“They are not cute,” she spat.

“Sorry,” Henry told her without an ounce of apology. “They’re cute.” He slid past her into the living room and navigated his way through the avalanches of (grudgingly) adorable black origami swans with squiggled white pointed teeth. Dropping his bag in front of him, he wiggled his way between two mounds of the folded paper animals. “I think we can make them evil, though,” he said, unzipping his bag and pulling out his Avengers pencil case. “Or at least not as cute.” 

Her interest piqued (but stalwartly hidden behind her impenetrable mask of sullen disinterest), Emma glided towards him and squatted so she could peer over his shoulder. The red pen he uncapped intrigued her, the color an intoxicating variant of newly shed blood. How lovely.

Holding one of the swans between two fingers, he carefully dotted a bit of red into the center of its white eye. She gasped in surprise. A single dot of red ink had transformed her sickeningly adorable swan into a tiny maniacal and bloodthirsty beast.

“Henry,” she whispered. “You’re a genius.”

“I read a lot of comics,” he said. “And I’m not done yet.” He proceeded to roll the ball of the pen along the points of the swan’s front-most teeth. 

“My god,” she said, plucking the swan from his fingers with the utmost reverence. “How beautiful.”

“Uh-huh,” Henry said and pegged her with knowing glance. “Just don’t go making them real or anything, huh? Mom’s still trying to clean up the last mess you made.”

She huffed. “I’m teaching her how to be a Savior,” she said.

“She already is a savior,” Henry said. “She’s saved all of us a couple times over.” He poked her leg with his capped pen. “You’re mad at her for something that happened in Camelot and you’re not telling her what. That’s dumb.”

The small part of Emma’s mind still dedicated to Emma Swan stepped up and forbade the Dark One from hanging her son by his ankles over a moat of lava. Instead, she turned the swan she was holding into a tiny fire-breathing beast of malice and terror. The black swan shook itself into sentience and clapped its tiny beak together a few times in confusion. The little devil trumpeted a high pitched squawk, stretched its wings, and blew tiny sparks out of its nostrils.

Henry breathed a long drawn out sigh of undeserved teenage tribulation. “Seriously?” Rifling through his bag, he came up with a half-eaten turkey sandwich from his lunch. He stripped off some of the meat and offered it to the little beast, who sniffed it once and then gobbled it down. The swan cocked its head at Henry, looked up at Emma, and then bungled through the air to Henry’s shoulder. It nipped his ear and then honked at his sandwich.

Henry arched an eyebrow at Emma. “When mom gets angry at me for bringing him home, I’m telling her it’s your fault.”

Emma frowned. “You are not taking him with you. He’s mine.”

“You can have him back when you tell Mom what happened in Camelot,” Henry said, packing up his bag. 

“That’s not fair!”

Henry jumped to his feet. “None of this is fair!” he spat. The swan leaped into the air, let out a surprised honk and a short burst of fire before settling back on his shoulder. “You’re my mom,” he said, his eyes suddenly bright. “I fought for you. I _believed_ in you. I found you. I brought you home, where you belonged because I wanted my family to be together, and now–” His lips rumpled together like a thread strung with too much fabric. “You’re not her.”

Something unpleasant and sickly roiled in her chest. Pity, she thought. No, affection. Love? Sadness? Disgusting. But she felt herself burbling a pathetic, “Henry, kid, please,” before her defenses clamped back into place. She straightened herself from an ungainly slouch, stiffened her jaw. 

“I’m more than she ever was,” she said.

But Henry shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he told her. “You are so wrong.”

The door slammed behind him. The windows rattled. Whatever he originally came for, forgotten. 

Emma drew a deep breath, her insides quivering and who she used to be hammering against the walls she had internally erected around it. The piles of black paper swans turned to mounds of ash. She sent them to the realm with the fire breathing beetles and immediately followed. Target practice. That’s what she needed. Destruction and demolition would settle her nerves and rid her mind of that insufferable boy and everything Camelot had brought to light.

Everything his other mother had done. Everything she had failed to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr @ fairytalefix. Thanks for reading!


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